Peter Mucha

Inquirer Staff Writer

Gallery:

A hundred million dollars - or more - won't be lining the pockets of Mexican drug dealers, a Georgia power company or a retired English couple, according to news stories.

The drug dealers lost at least 105 tons of marijuana when it was seized in the border town of Tijuana during several pre-dawn raids on Monday.

The utility company sent an Atlanta woman a bill for more than $1 billion.

And an Englishwoman claims she had the winning Euro lottery ticket, worth $179.6 million, but her husband "binned" it - that is tossed it in the trash.

Pot jackpot. The street value of the weed seized South of the Border: $340 million. At least. There were so many bundles - about 10,000 - that authorities didn't have time to weigh them all before Monday's news conference, said Gen. Alfonso Duarte Mujica.

So the total value could go up.

The haul, the biggest in several years in Tijuana, nearly equalled this year's previous total for all of the town's state of Baja California.

Mexican seizures totalled about 2,000 tons a year until a dropoff last year to 1,385 tons last year.

Shocking electric bill. Scarlett Hall couldn't believe her eyes when she opened her bill from Cobb Energy. It said her family owed $1,016,500,130.09.

Yes, more than a billion dollars.

Even the part one might round off was itself a princely sum - more than $16 million.

"Last month I pawned the title to my car to pay the light bill," she said. "Now, I think I might need to start selling organs."

No, her husband hadn't been testing the world's largest display of kilowatt-hogging holiday decorations - complete with animatronic elves, 100-foot inflatables and searchlights for Santa.

The charge was for 40 years' worth of siphoning power off the grid to run the Bat Cave and the Bat Signal because her husband's Batman.

No, he's not. Just kidding.

It was all a mistake.

The bill was adjusted to its proper amount: $287.

And she didn't even have a coupon.

One way to test a marriage. Here's how to tell if your wife really loves you: Throw out her lottery ticket worth $179.6 million.

"I was so angry at first," said an unnamed retired woman, according to today's London Daily Mail. "My husband loses everything I give him. I've told him he's never looking after one of my lottery tickets again."

Talk about locking the barn after a horse has been stolen.

And this wasn't any horse - it was Pegasus.

She knows she won because she wrote down the numbers of their ticket in the Euromillions lottery, she said. And reports did say the ticket was sold in Conventry, where the couple live, though lottery officials have not yet confirmed exactly where.

"We have searched every inch of the house. I've even checked his pockets," she said, according to the Mail.

"There's no point being angry though really," she said. "What's done is done. I couldn't be angry with him now. My whole life is taken up with him."